Read “Coal Industry” from West Virginia Encyclopedia,

Answer the following:

1. When was coal exploited as a commercial fuel?

2. The erection of what was a stimulus to coal mining?

3. What connected the coal fields with Richmond and the new city of Huntington?

4. Who is regarded as the “Father of the West Virginia Coal Industry”?

5. What U.S. Senator brought political power and deep financial resources to the new Fairmont Coal Company?

6. What Fairmont lawyer and governor of West Virginia (1890–93), also joined the company?

7. What Maryland company controlled by Clarence Watson, remains today a major producer of West Virginia coal?

8. Along with the coal mines that sprang up along the railroad lines what were, built by the operators to provide the necessary services for a rapidly expanding labor force?

9. In some southern counties, the foreign-born and what other populations combined to outnumber native-born whites?

10. Who acted as a bargaining agent for the miners?

11. The Mine War of 1920 included what four conflicts?

12. The passage of what act granted workers the right to organize unions?

13. Labor-saving machinery was known as what?

14. By the end of the 20th century, ever larger earth-moving machines decapitated entire mountains in the controversial practice known as what?

15. In 1997, West Virginia reached a peak coal production of more than how many tons?